Human Management of the Hierarchical System for the Control of Multiple Mobile Robots

In order to take advantage of autonomous robotic systems, and yet ensure successful completion of all feasible tasks, we propose a mediation hierarchy in which an operator can interact at all system levels. Robotic systems are not robust in handling un-modeled events. Reactive behaviors may be able to guide the robot back into a modeled state and to continue. Reasoning systems may simply fail. Once a system has failed it is difficult to restart the task from the failed state. Rather, the rule base is revised, programs altered, and the task re-tried from the beginning. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-95-17. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/213 Human Management of a Hierarchical System for the Control of Multiple Mobile Robots (Dissertation Proposal) MS-CIS-95-17 GRASP Lab 392